Westmont College drama students are exploring love and money in “The Miser.”
The Westmont College Festival Theatre will stage Moliere’s “The Miser, or the School for Lies,” at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 25-26 and March 3-5 and 2 p.m. March 5.
The comedy will be performed at the Westmont Porter Theatre on the Montecito campus.
“Moliere’s plays are confections of marvelous artifice,” award-winning director John Blondell said in a news release.
“This play, like all of Moliere’s, exposes characters pushed to play elaborate double-games, in order to survive in a materialistic society,” said Dr. Blondell, Westmont’ professor of theater arts.
“Love and money! How can we get it and how can we get more?” Dr. Blondell said. “Everyone lies, everyone tricks, everyone deceives, and all for their own particular ends. I felt that the situations, atmospheres, acting opportunities, and themes would be good ones to tackle for our department, and the theme of the obsessive quest for money, and the consequences that result, is a good theme for any day and time.
“Lovers want to get married, a parent wants to hoard wealth and obstruct those marriage plans, and everyone around those characters scheme and plot and contrive to get what they think is best for them. In addition, this play is just plain great fun,” said Dr. Blondell.
He said Moliere’s wildly funny, comic romp is just as funny in Santa Barbara in 2022 as it was for the Parisian audience in 1668.
Dr. Blondell has inverted the genders in the play, to create an alternate matriarchal universe in which conventions, stereotypes and relationships are also inverted.
“What results is a kind of social satire, which helps create a richly textured, multivalent comic universe that I hope will be as irresistible as it is eye-opening,” Dr. Blondell said.
The cast includes Rory Nguyen (Harpagon), Alaina Dean (Cleanthe), Joel Michelson (Elise), Emiliana Brewer (Valerie), Noah Nims (Marianne), Emily Derr (Anselme), Ford Sachsenmaier (Frosine), Emmie Matthews (Simon), Maegan Randolph (Jacques), Ash Vanyo (La Fleche), Juliana Moore (Dame Claude), Ciena Fitzgerald (Brindavoine) and Claire Bassett (La Merluche).
Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for students and seniors. To purchase, go to westmont.edu/boxoffice.
For patrons who are not students, faculty or staff, proof of COVID-19 vaccination or a negative COVID test within the last 72 hours of the show will be required. Everyone attending will be required to wear masks at all times inside campus buildings. The performers, taking part in approved county-mandated vaccination and testing protocols, will be unmasked for the performance.
For more information, call Westmont at 805-565-7040.
email: kzehnder@newspress.com
